“The crystal is just a guide in the end,” he says, wiping his hand dry on his tunic. “It’s like the ruler that the artist uses to draw a straight line. It will guide you, and it can be used in ways that no one’s ever thought of before, but it is not essential. The knowing, just like the artist’s talent, resides inside the wielder.”
Emily bites her lip, trying to make sense of his words. Now that she is finally getting some answers, she isn’t entirely sure what to do with them.
“But what is the knowing?” she asks, turning away to skate a few feet before doubling back. The motion calms her; the exercise fills her with both comfort and an almost painful nostalgia. “Every time I think I’m starting to understand it, it does some crazy fucked up thing, and I’m back to square one again.”
Derek watches her, waiting until she stops in front of him again before he answers.
“The knowing is a lot of things.” He moves to her side and takes her arm, guiding her along the red line toward the glass between the benches. The sound of their skates seems very loud in the silent arena, each swish and step reverberating endlessly from the high ceiling.
As they reach the glass, the darkness in the stands begins to coalesce into individual shapes—hundreds, perhaps thousands—of silent spectators watching them with still, solemn faces.
“The knowing is all the experiences…all the knowledge…all the collective power and bravery and magic of a thousand lifetimes.” He pauses, looking first at her, and then at all the people watching them.
She can see distinct features out there now; there are men and women, boys and girls, old and young. There are whites and blacks and Asians and other races she can’t even put names to. There are flyers and Karikis and Sarqin and more.
“Mostly,” Derek continues, his voice lower, “and most importantly—it’s you.” He taps the glass, pointing at their silent audience. “They are you. You—as you were; you—as you will be; you—from all the lives you’ve ever lived. And you’ll have something to learn—something to remember—from each and every one of them.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Emily found herself sprawled against one wall of the cave, the crystal sword clutched between her hands so tightly that the edge of its blade bit painfully into her palms. The remnants of the vision still shone like a beacon inside her mind, and with it, a thousand tiny fragments of other memories swirled and danced just out of reach. There was more there, lurking in the corners of her psyche, if she could just catch hold of it.
It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the dim interior of the cave, and a moment longer for her to make sense of what she was looking at. The scene was almost as she’d left it—so close, in fact, that the one enormous, crucial difference refused to register in her reeling mind.
Maddy sat beside her pack in the back of the alcove. The lantern’s yellow light gleamed on her black hair and cast misshapen shadows across the uneven floor and walls.
At the farthest edge of Emily’s consciousness, she could hear the roar and crackle as the little town continued to burn to ash in the night, punctuated now and then by the cry of a bird or the howl of something larger.
In the center of the floor, one dark figure sat beside another, but it wasn’t Celine’s gaze that met Emily’s across the prone shape lying between them—it was Corbbmacc’s. A long scar, shockingly white in the greasy light, ran along the line of his jaw, but otherwise, his face seemed unmarked by the burns that had ravaged it.
Emily’s gaze fell to Celine’s still form. Her eyes were closed, and Corbbmacc held both her tiny hands between his own.
Emily rose, shoving the sword into her belt and making it only to her knees before she half crawled toward her friends.
“No,” she whispered, but her lips felt numb. “Cel…”
She clutched the smaller girl’s shoulders, not even feeling the sting of the rough fabric against her sore palms.
“Celine!” she tried to shout, but all that came out was a croak.
Her heart was beating too fast. Her face felt hot. She could feel her pulse pounding in her cheeks, and her world seemed to be spinning farther and farther away from reality.
“Celine…”
Celine’s eyes fluttered open in her pale, lined face, and she smiled weakly at Emily.
“S’a’right, Em,” she murmured. She tried to raise one gnarled old hand toward her friend but couldn’t quite manage it. Her arm fell back to her chest, and Corbbmacc enveloped her hand once more in his own.
Emily’s terror broke apart, morphing into anger before she realized what was happening.
“What did you do, Cel!” she cried, almost shaking her friend.
Celine’s smile faded a little, but her face remained serene.
“What I ’ad to do, Em.”
“You can’t keep doing this to yourself!” Emily said, her voice rising both in pitch and volume. “You can’t keep doing this to me.”
“I’m a’right,” Celine repeated, color flushing her cheeks.
“Are you? Are you really? None of this is ‘all right’, Cel. And one of these times it isn’t going to be all right at all!”
“Yeh can’t stop me,” Celine said hoarsely, her voice barely above a whisper, but still managing to carry her old defiant tartness. “Yeh can’t make me somethin’ I’m not. If I can help people, that’s what I’m gonna do, Em. It’s who I am.”
“You’re killing yourself!”
“Mayhap I am, and mayhap I ain’t. I’m learnin’ to control it. I don’t have to always use so much.”
“But you don’t have any more to give!”
“I’ve got some, and I’m gonna go on givin’ it.”
Shaking, Emily got to her feet, her anger rolling out like the tide and leaving her with only despair and frustration.
She turned away from them all and stumbled out of the cave, taking a few shambling steps toward the distant flames before they blurred in her vision and the tears spilled out onto her cheeks.
A fresh wave of anger came with them. She was so tired of feeling like nothing was in her control. She was so tired of the weight of guilt that kept crushing over her as Celine wasted away and the knowing grew stronger, bringing with it moments of intensifying joy as she dealt out death.
In her mind’s eye, unbidden and unwanted, she saw the mine shaft from which she and Corbb had escaped; she saw Dalivan climbing toward Corbbmacc on a fraying ladder; she saw the pick in her hand; she saw herself throw it; she saw it strike Dalivan’s shoulder; she saw him fall.
She’d killed him. She’d killed a man. And what did she feel when the knowing guided her hand? What did she feel when the knowing showed her how to do it? Pure unadulterated bliss.
In all those lives she had known, had she only learned a lust for bloodshed? Was that all there was in those lives? And Celine—sweet Celine—who only wanted to help others—forced to endure horrors from her past, terrible pain, and the ravages of age every time she did. Celine, who had sacrificed so much for Emily—and Emily, who found such pleasure in dealing destruction.
How could this be right? How was she to trust Derek and learn all these things she was apparently meant to know if all the knowledge promised was more death—more destruction?
“I’m sorry,” a voice said behind her, and Maddy came up to stand beside her. Emily saw her, a dark shape in the night, from the corner of one eye, but did not turn to face her.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she rasped, not taking her eyes from the fire.
“Now that is a pretty pile of bullshit,” Maddy said, and the bitterness in her tone made Emily look at her sharply. “I’ve got plenty to be sorry for. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to keep Daniel from being taken by the Reavers. I’m sorry I misjudged you back in the mines. I’m sorry for everyone I couldn’t save, but they’re all better off now that they’re dead instead of digging out the worthless fuckin’ rocks. Shit…I’m sorry I feel that way about them dying.”
Emily
said nothing. Right now, there was no room left inside her to feel anything else—to feel for anyone else. She just turned away again.
“But,” Maddy went on, “what I was apologizing for was for what happened to your friends.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“Still bullshit,” Maddy singsonged. “Just shut up and listen, okay?” She waited, but Emily didn’t protest further. She just went on watching the flames.
“Galak and I set that fire back there.”
Emily’s breath caught in her throat.
“We weren’t trying to hurt you—just drive you out of the building. We thought you were Reavers, and we were going to make you take us to Danny.”
Suddenly, the crystal sword was back in Emily’s hand, drawn from the loop on her belt where her real sword had once hung. She had no memory of having put it there, but now she was raising it up over her head and turning toward Maddy.
“You did that?” she hissed. The knowing began to burn hot in her veins. Firelight lit up the transparent blade of the sword in her hand like sun rays on the surface of a pond. “All that is your fault?”
“We didn’t know who you were. We never got a good look at you. We didn’t expect to find anyone but the goddamned Reavers this far east.” Maddy took a deep breath. “We were just trying to get to Daniel.”
Emily stood motionless for a moment, terribly aware of the heavy crystal sword in her hand, listening as Daniel’s name seem to echo over and over inside her head. She inhaled deeply, beating back the waves of emotion that threatened to carry her away. The knowing—and her anger—crested, then collapsed, and she let the sword fall from her fingers.
It struck a stone when it landed on the hardpan at her feet, the impact producing a high, clear note that pierced the night like a bell.
She took a step away from Maddy, staring down at the sword with horror.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, not looking up.
She lacked the discipline to control the knowing—that’s what Derek had told her, and as it became stronger, that fact became ever more apparent. She remembered how she’d been in the mines, surrounded by all that crystal—half out of her mind and willing as often as not to attack anyone who entered her sphere. If she did not learn to control the knowing, it would control her.
Maddy shrugged, apparently unfazed.
“Whatever,” she said. “You were worse before.” She nudged the sword that lay between them with the toe of one boot. “I just wish I’d carved something a little less dangerous…like a puppy or something.”
There was the crunch of footsteps behind them, and Corbbmacc came out of the cave to stand beside Emily. He and Maddy exchanged a look, then Maddy turned and ducked back inside without another word.
Emily couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Her gaze remained fixed on the sword at her feet, watching the firelight that glimmered, magnified in its depths. The light shimmered, breaking apart into its component colors, reminding her irresistibly of the mermaids’ scales.
Tentatively, Corbbmacc gripped her shoulder, and the two of them stood there in silence for a long moment.
“Celine’s sleeping,” he said finally, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. “Are you all right?”
Slowly, Emily lifted her head and looked at him. Her eyes were drawn inexorably to the jagged scar, nearly half an inch wide, that ran along one side of his jaw. Above it, the skin across his cheek looked strangely pink and smooth, marred here and there by angry red patches that looked like welts.
He’d been hurt, and while she didn’t know much about burns—most of the injuries she’d ever seen or sustained had involved ice—she thought that the severity of Corbbmacc’s injuries would have almost certainly led to infection and death out here in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Celine had done what she had to do—what she always did. If she hadn’t, they’d have lost Corbbmacc; she’d have lost him. She realized, suddenly, that that prospect was every bit as terrifying as losing Celine.
“I’m okay,” she said, reaching up to brush her hair out of her eyes. “How are you feeling?”
Corbbmacc shrugged. “Better.”
“Good.”
A few more seconds passed in silence as Emily watched him in the meager light of the distant flames.
Corbbmacc shifted uncomfortably. “I saw what happened,” he said, looking down at the sword on the ground. “Is it safe for you to keep that?”
“Probably not,” she admitted, her gaze following his. “But I have to figure out how to control this thing I have, Corbb.” She swallowed hard. “I have to learn how to use it so that it doesn’t use me. If I don’t, someone’s going to get hurt, and I’m going to end up doing something I regret.”
He nodded, once more watching her with an intensity she found a little unnerving.
“And having the crystal will help you do that? Is that what you learned in there? When you were in that trance or whatever?” He jerked his head back toward the cave.
“Yeah.” She met his gaze again, and they just looked at one another.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay?”
“Well…yeah. I’ll do what I can, and I’ll take care of Celine so you can focus on what you need to do.”
She smiled at him. It felt like the first real smile she’d had in days…years, maybe.
“Thank you.”
Suddenly, she was aware just how close to one another they were standing—and of the weight of his hand on her shoulder. She stared into his eyes, unsure what exactly she was feeling, and just a little afraid of how much it felt like the knowing.
He leaned toward her, and she felt her heart beat a little faster as heat rose in her face—
“Hey there!”
Galak’s booming voice made Emily gasp, and she and Corbbmacc broke apart, turning as one toward the shape lumbering out of the dark.
The Sarqin carried a large bundle under one arm and moved with that strange loping gait Emily had first noticed from the roof of the tavern.
“I was just getting us some grub,” he said. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m starving.”
He bounced past them, ducking to keep from banging his head on the entrance, and disappeared inside the small, shadowy darkness beyond.
Emily and Corbbmacc looked at one another. He shrugged, offered her an embarrassed sort of smile, then bent to scoop up her sword.
He held it out to her. She took it, slipping it back into the loop on her belt, and together they joined the others inside the cave.
Casey
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The air was warm and so humid it seemed to have a presence of its own, quite apart from the press of bodies around her. Casey let the crowd sweep her along, carrying her first down one wide thoroughfare and then another. Every few steps, the festival’s sound track would change—country music gave way to bluegrass, rock was swallowed up by a bassy hiphop beat, and everywhere—everywhere—jazz music was an implacable constant. Smells that Casey associated with the state fairs of her childhood assaulted her from every side—popcorn, vanilla, cinnamon, hot oil; but these were punctuated with the more exotic aromas of Cajun delicacies for which she had no names.
She still had hours before she would take to one of the makeshift stages with Landlocked for another performance, but she wished it was sooner. The sights and sounds and smells of this booming festival—with an attendance that probably outstripped the total population of the Louisianan backwater that hosted it—washed over her without leaving much of an impression. Some of that was the booze, of course. But most of it was the roar of thoughts in her head, competing with the guilt within her heart. It was funny…she’d spent so long trying to fill up the void inside her, and now she felt like she was full to bursting with a roiling mass of emotions, both sweet and sour.
That morning, she’d come out of the bathroom of the room she and Jeff were sharing to find him propped up on the bed an
d watching the TV. He was shirtless, his long hair a tousled tangle, and the sight of him there made something stir in her heart. That feeling scared her a little, but it also warmed her in a way that only the vodka had since Emily’s disappearance.
He was watching one of those morning news shows, though she couldn’t have said which one; they all looked the same to her, like artifacts from a bygone era of curved glass and boxy antique televisions. She sank down into the armchair at the little desk and blearily stared at the screen. Without her contacts, the world around her was soft and fuzzy around the edges. She was going to have to do something about that eventually.
She tried to force the images into focus, but before she could, the voice issuing from the TV’s shitty little speaker penetrated her still foggy brain.
“…Casey, honey, if you’re out there, please come home…”
It was her mother.
The words, the familiar sound of her voice, the grief and pleading Casey could hear there—they all struck Casey like a punch to the gut.
“That was Diane Cattrall,” the news anchor said, using that insufferably solemn tone they always did for such segments. “Mother of the missing Minnesotan teen, Casey Cattrall. If you have any information, please call—”
The TV went blank, and she turned to find Jeff setting the remote control back on the nightstand beside him.
He had just looked at her, without saying anything, and Casey had known what he was thinking. She’d been thinking it herself—was still thinking it.
An elbow in her side jolted her back to the present, and she looked over her shoulder just in time to catch a glimpse of the portly man in a t-shirt and shorts that were two sizes too small for him as he disappeared into the throng—the owner of said elbow.
“Watch it, asshole,” she called after him, but she couldn’t quite get her heart into it. The son of a bitch couldn’t have heard her over that blaring sax anyway.
As she turned to resume her wandering, her gaze passed over the small, dark entrance to a brown canvas tent sandwiched between a stand selling deep fried Oreos on one side and one advertising “Jumbo Gumbo Bowls” on the other. A hand-lettered sign on plain white paper hung over it: “Fabulous Fortunetelling”, it said.
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